Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

Spongebob Squarepants! And the most important truths.

It’s incredible how much technology has changed in the last twenty years.

I started on CDs, VHS tapes, View Finders, and floppy disks. Now there’s iPhones with facial recognition, Netflix, TikTok, and Oculus headsets. I feel old just admitting that we didn’t have cable growing up. Like:

Shiii… back in my day…we didn’t have all this unlimited, commercial free, spend-an-hour-picking-an-hour-and-a-half-movie streaming stuff.

*Shakes head*

You don’t know how good you got it.

We don’t even need cable now. It’s totally irrelevant to my life now, and I often forget how much of a big deal it used to be when we went to our grandparents house.

While our little TV had 50 or some channels, their big screen TV had over 500. And their big remote had a menu button so that we could scroll through the guide of all 500 channels over and over again to plan what we would watch for the whole day.

Along with the fun activities with our grandparents, the lemonade, soda, kid’s meals, late nights and general spoiling, we loved staying at their house because having cable meant that they had Disney Channel. Cable didn’t just introduce us to Sister Sister, The Proud Family, That’s So Raven, and the whole range of Disney Channel Original Movies though, but also The Boondocks, Family Guy, Tom & Jerry, Looney Tunes, Parental Control and Real Sex, and my personal favorite, Animal Planet.

All this television felt like a real treat because we’d go so long without watching much of anything. In our home, our mom was generally strict about limiting how much TV that me, my brother, and sister watched. She supported Between the Lions and Blues Clues, but preferred to see us reading or playing outside. All That!, The Amanda Bynes Show, and Drake & Josh were also okay. But there was one Nickelodeon show that she hated which we couldn’t get enough of: Spongebob Squarepants.

I don’t think I laughed harder or more frequently at any other show growing up. It didn’t matter if we were at our home, or our grandparents’, or in the bed, or in the car, we watched Spongebob Squarepants religiously. I wish I could have known back then just how easy it is to permanently burn obnoxious songs into my head. Because I’ll never be able to forget F is for Friends…Sweet, Sweet Victory…C-A-M-P-F-I-R-E-S-O-N-G Song… It’s Just a Grill…The Krusty Krab Pizza…or I’m a Goofy-Goober…even if I wanted to.

Spongebob is the epitome of silly, and that seemed to scare a lot of adults. They claimed that the show killed brain cells, but what did that even mean? I couldn’t tell you. If anything, the fact that adults didn’t get it just made Spongebob even more special. It existed for kids, so we chose to put aside adults’ harsh opinions in favor of our own genuine enjoyment.

Obviously, for Spongebob Squarepants to be so popular there had to be something relatable about it in addition to the fantastical premise of it being about talking sea creatures who live in a place called Bikini Bottom. After rewatching some of my favorite episodes during quarantine, I’m sure there are books worth of analysis on this show.

And of course, as we’ve gotten older, Spongebob-fluency has become one of the best sources for hilariously relatable memes.

In a very real way, the show showed us how to laugh at ourselves and our often absurd world. There’s something about remembering, rewatching, and remixing this show. At once feeling nostalgic for simpler times, and finding surprising insights into these messy ones.

I knew Spongebob was funny before I realized that it was funny because it was true. Through all of its shenanigans, the show emphasizes how easy it is to forget, deny, or just be plain ignorant to the most important realities. Maybe the most important being that this is water.

Let’s go to Tea at the Treedome:

One day, Spongebob meets a squirrel named Sandy, and they instantly become friends over their shared love of karate. Spongebob learns that she lives on land, but asks why Sandy wears a helmet, and she tells him that she needs her air. It doesn’t even occur to Spongebob what that really means, and Patrick tells him that “putting on airs” means that Sandy must be fancy, so remember: pinkies up!

Spongebob goes to Sandy’s treedome with Patrick, ready to impress his new friend. However, the minute he steps through the door, he watches the water run down the drain and starts to panic. While trying to act friendly and fancy with Sandy, Spongebob shrivels, his voice gets hoarse, and once she leaves to get cookies, he attempts to escape. As Patrick stands outside the dome cheering “Pinky!!” Spongebob finds the door locked, and convinces himself that water is for quitters.

But he can’t deny his thirst. After drinking and absorbing all the water he could find, Spongebob tries to ditch Sandy again and fails because Patrick comes into the dome to stop him. Also ignorant to his reliance on water, Patrick quickly falls to his hands and knees, sweating and coughing.

Now both friends scream and bang on the door to escape, but can’t get out. Sandy returns with tea and cookies, and finds Spongebob and Patrick completely dried out. She revives them by giving them helmets and filling them with water, then they enjoy their picnic, pinkies up.

Just like the characters of Spongebob Squarepants, we are composed of, born in, surrounded by, and helplessly dependent on, the element known as water. Because we are literally waters, what we do to them we do to ourselves. No life exists without water, and when the water goes, so do we.

These truths are deceptively obvious and profoundly mundane. We don’t have to consciously think about them to still feel and be moved by their power. But sometimes they make themselves plain, painfully, like they did for Spongebob and Patrick. Like for these two friends, sometimes our ignorance means that we have to learn the truth the hard way.

More often than not though, it’s the outright rejection of the truth by those in power that harms water, all life, and therefore people of the global majority. For us, remembering that water, free flowing and freely available to all life, is foundational to protecting our collective survival and thriving.